Retail giants work on own mobile payment system

Several of the largest retail chains in theUnited Statesare working on a payment network that will allow customers to pay via a smartphone. It could challenge similar efforts made by both cellphone networks and tech giants.

The Merchant Customer Exchange has already announced 15 members including 7-Eleven, Best Buy, CVS, Lowe’s, Sears, Target and Wal-Mart. The group estimates that almost everyUSsmartphone owners visits at least one member store each week.


The technology behind the deal is still in development. All that’s official so far is that it will be available on “virtually any smartphone” and that as well as payments it will be hooked up to store offers and promo deals.

It’s not just the use of this payment system in the stores that will matter, but also the fact that it could mean the members choose not to accept rival payment services such as Google Wallet. To lose access to all these major players could mean other services simply aren’t attractive to users.

The retailers may also get a big financial advantage from the system beyond simply picking up extra trade from impulse buyers even if they don’t have cash or cards to hand or don’t fancy waiting in line to make a traditional payment. Retailers running their own payment system will cut out fees from the likes of Google or PayPal, and the sheer market force of those involved could even get a better deal from card companies.

The downside of the sheer size of the project is that it will make security absolutely vital. Having access to the card details of customers across all the biggest retailers nationwide will be an extremely juicy target for cyber criminals. Technical issues aside though, the big question is whether even this array of retailers is enough to make a payment system work. It’s still possible that many shoppers will conclude it’s only worth getting the right phone and sorting out a payment account if they can be sure of using the mobile payment pretty much everywhere

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Smartphone market now a two-horse race

Two trends have been apparent in the smartphone market for some time now: Android becoming dominant in number one slot and everyone else other than Apple taking a real kicking. Newly released figures confirm that trend: if you buy a smartphone today, it’s probably running Android.

The figures from IDC cover worldwide sales between April and June this year. Android is now on 68 percent, with iPhone lagging behind on 17 percent. In the space of a year, Android’s lead has gone from a little over double to selling four handsets for every iPhone.


You can of course argue that such comparisons are a little unfair as it’s dozens of manufacturers against one, but that’s missing an important point: the wider the gap grows, the more likely it becomes that app developers will direct their efforts towards Android handsets.

The figures also suggest Android may be benefiting from another advantage: the sheer range of devices with different specifications at different price points means its more likely smartphone buyer will find exactly the right balance of cost and hardware for their needs with an Android than the far more limited range of iPhones.

The combined Android and Apple market share of 85 percent is a new high, speaking to the collapse in popularity of rival operating systems. BlackBerry may be in bronze medal position, but it won’t be taking much pride in a market share of 4.8 percent. Meanwhile Microsoft continues to get grim news: at 3.5 percent, Windows Phone is still lagging behind even Symbian on 4.4 percent. That’s despite Nokia effectively ditching Symbian to joint forces with Microsoft.

Samsung is the big winner among individual manufacturers. It made 44 percent of the Android handsets covered by these figures, which means it is now responsible for almost three out of every ten smartphones being sold.

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Aisle411 wants to help you navigate through Walgreens

As grocery stores, Walgreens and Walmarts continue to supersize, finding your way around can be difficult. Different stores within the same chain are set up differently which only adds to the confusion. Just because you know where the the toilet paper is in one Walmart doesn’t mean you can find it in the same place in another. That is where aisle411 is supposed to come in. Just plug in your shopping list for Walgreens and the app should lead you on a simple path to each item.

Aisle411 has been available on the iPhone for a while and is also available in Google Play for Android phones. According to Engadget, aisle411 is now available for Walgreens. All 7,907 drugstores nationwide have been mapped in the app. So far only Walgreens is mapped nationwide. Depending on where you live you might have a larger selection of mapped stores. The application doesn’t have Walmart yet but hopefully its coming.


The application provides more than just a store navigation system. You can create shopping lists within the app and search through recipes. You can create more than one shopping list so that you can hit different stores for different items. For those who do extreme couponing and visit multiple stores to get the best deals, this app could come in handy. It will also show you what coupons are available in different stores. You can save the ones you want to your “grocery savings card” and use it when you check out.

For many of us who don’t live in one of the “select markets” with mapped out stores, the only store we can currently use the app to navigate through is Walgreens. For some people that might be enough of a perk to choose it over say Out of Milk or Grocery IQ.

Some people really like the app and the way that you can use it to navigate through stores. Others find the app to still be a bit primitive when it comes to using GPS to maneuver through stores. Others find that it doesn’t provide necessary options like the ability to rearrange your shopping order or add custom aisles. One big drawback is that it doesn’t seem to be able to distinguish between frozen products and fresh products, for example frozen and fresh pineapple that are almost always on different aisles.

Every app goes through teething issues and hopefully aisle411 is just going through such a phase. The potential to become a killer app is definitely there, it just needs a bit more work.

Now if they could only map out the various Walmarts and Targets, it just might make the top shopping app of all time. Code corrupted. Insert fresh copy.

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Amazon smartphone rumors intensify

Increasingly-credible reports suggest Amazon could have its own smartphone on the market within a year. But analysts are divided on exactly what it would achieve.

It appears to be a case where several different rumors that might be circumstantial evidence on their own are coming together to make something more compelling. Bloomberg notes insiders claiming Amazon is working on production with Chinese smartphone manufacturer Foxconn.


Meanwhile Amazon is also said to have been in talks with several companies to buy up patents: not so much to gain technology, but rather as a defensive tool given the current legal lunacy in the smartphone market.

The Wall Street Journal goes as far to say Amazon has got parts suppliers testing a working model. It expects production later this year or in early 2012.

The most common theory is that an Amazon phone would be made and marketed using the same logic as the Kindle Fire tablet. Firstly, Amazon has a major advantage when it comes to selling devices direct to consumers. Secondly, it can afford to make little or no money from the sales if it’s then able to either take a cut on purchases made using the device, or sell premium services such as Amazon Prime.

There’s already speculation that the handset would be sold unlocked and without a network commitment, at the same $199 price point of the Fire. Assuming it’s a full-fledged smartphone, that would be a very attractive price tag.

It’s questionable whether the Fire business model would work as well on a smartphone. Paying for streaming video services wouldn’t be as attractive on a small screen. There’d also be the question of whether it’s in Amazon’s interests to leverage the Kindle brand: it’s risky enough having the Fire use a backlit screen rather then e-ink, but associating the Kindle name with reading apps on a tiny phone screen may be a step too far.

There’s also a theory that Amazon wants to find a way to make cash from people shopping in physical stores. Digital Trends’ Geoff Duncan suggests this could be done by taking existing apps that photograph barcodes and then produce price comparisons and putting these front and center on the handsets

The logic is that this will often encourage shoppers to order the goods they are examining online at a cheaper price — particularly with Amazon’s ever-dangerous 1-click feature.

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Androids form rogue army

We often speak of smartphones as more like mini computers than mobile telephones. Now we’ve may have the downside of such similarities: a botnet made up of Android handsets rather than PCs.

A Microsoft security blogger has noted that a recent batch of spam e-mails showed many familiar characteristics: it all come from hijacked Yahoo e-mails and offered bogus stock tips. However, Terry Zink also noticed that all the messages had a message saying they were sent from an Android device, a claim backed up by the code that is sent along with the message.


According to Zink, many of the messages came from developing nations, or those such asRussiawhere cybersecurity is relaxed to say the least.

Zink’s theory is that people in these countries are more likely to seek out sources of smartphone apps other than the official Android market (now known as Google Play), and are also less likely to exercise security concerns. He openly speculates that the phone owners concerned have been seeking free knock-off copies of legitimate paid-for apps.

Naturally you have to take into account that a Microsoft employee has some interest in disparaging both Yahoo and the Android system, and there certainly seems to be some degree of assumption in Zink’s claims. It’s also fair to note that at the moment we can only infer there’s a botnet at work from the results: there isn’t yet specific evidence such a botnet exists, or any indication as to what the relevant malware is, or what form of disguise it uses in app stores.

Still, regardless of Zink’s motivation, it’s certainly a plausible theory, and serves as a reminder that with an open operating system users need to exercise the same level of caution and suspicion as they would when downloading and installing software for a PC.

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